NEW YORK (AP) — Cat Murphy, a
college student, has wanted to be a journalist since she was 11. Many
of her friends don’t understand why.
When they engage with the
news — if they do — they hear a cacophony of voices. They don’t know who
to believe. Reporters are biased. They make mistakes. Besides, why
would you hitch your future to a dying industry?
“There
is a lot of commentary — ‘Oh, good for you. Look what you’re walking
into. You’re going to be screaming into the void. You’re going to be
useless,’” said Murphy, a 21-year-old graduate student at the University
of Maryland’s journalism school.
She is undeterred. And it’s also why she’s not surprised by the findings of a study this fall that documented negative attitudes toward the news media among 13- to 18-year-old Americans. The press rarely fares well in surveys of adults, but it’s sobering to see the same disdain among people whose opinions about the world are still forming.
Words to describe the news media today
Asked by the News Literacy Project
for one word to describe today’s news media, 84% of teens responded
with something negative — “biased,” “crazy,” “boring,” “fake, ”bad,”
“depressing,” “confusing,” “scary.”
More than half of the teens
surveyed believe journalists regularly engage in unethical behaviors
like making up details or quotes in stories, paying sources, taking
visual images out of context or doing favors for advertisers. Less than a
third believe reporters correct their errors, confirm facts before
reporting them, gather information from multiple sources or cover
stories in the public interest — practices ingrained in the DNA of
reputable journalists.
To some degree, teens reflect the attitudes they’re exposed to,
particularly when the most prominent politician of their age has made
“fake news” a mantra. Experts say few teens follow news regularly or learn in school about the purpose of journalism.
Journalists don’t help themselves with mistakes or ethical lapses that make headlines. Opinionated reporters or commentators in an era of political division make readers wonder what to believe.
“Some
of this (attitude) is earned, but much of it is based on
misperception,” said Peter Adams, senior vice president of research and
design for the Washington-based News Literacy Project.
Never picking up the news habit
There are ways to turn things around, but it will take work.
Many
of Lily Ogburn’s classmates get their information from social media.
Their parents didn’t watch or read news reports as they grew up, so they
didn’t pick up the habit, said Ogburn, a senior at Northwestern
University’s journalism school.
Ogburn is the former
editor-in-chief at the well-regarded Daily Northwestern student
newspaper. The newspaper’s 2023 reports on alleged hazing and racism
within the school’s football program led to the ouster
of its coach. Still, she found some students don’t understand the
newspaper’s role; they believe it exists to protect people in power
rather than hold them accountable.
She frequently had to explain
what she did to classmates. “There’s a lot of mistrust toward
journalists,” she said. But it has firmed her resolve to stick with the
profession.
“I want to be a journalist that people trust,” Ogburn said, “and I
want to report news that makes people believe and trust in the media.”
The
news industry’s financial troubles over the past two decades have
hollowed out newsrooms and left fewer journalists on duty. Along with
not seeing much legitimate journalism, young people frequently don’t
experience it through popular culture — unlike a previous generation,
which learned in detail how Washington Post reporters Robert Woodward
and Carl Bernstein exposed the Watergate scandal in the Academy Award-winning movie “All the President’s Men.”
When
the News Literacy Project asked, two-thirds of teens couldn’t think of
anything when asked what movies or TV shows come to mind when they think
about journalism. Those who had answers most frequently cited the
“Spider-Man” franchise or the movie “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron
Burgundy.” Neither portrayal was particularly flattering.
Upon retiring as editor of Newsday, Howard Schneider helped develop
the State University of New York system’s first School of Journalism.
But instead of teaching future writers, editors or producers, he became
drawn to teaching non-journalists about being news consumers.
Now the executive director of SUNY Stony Brook’s Center for News Literacy, Schneider wasn’t surprised about any of the recent survey’s findings, either.
“The
negativity, the feeling that news is biased, is just a reflection of
how their parents feel,” Schneider said. “The more exposed to news,
legitimate news, the more their attitudes turn positive.”
He has
developed news literacy programs for school districts. “Students will
say, ‘I get my news from YouTube,’” he said. “I say, ‘No, you don’t,’”
and explains where the news originates and how to be discerning about
what they see.
Lessons from a news literacy class
That’s one of the lessons
that 16-year-old Brianne Boyack has taken from her course in news
literacy at Brighton High School in Cottonwood Heights, Utah. She had
little trust in news going in, but has learned the importance of
double-checking sources when she sees something interesting and seeking
outlets she’s found reliable.
Her classmate, Rhett MacFarlane,
applied what he learned in class to investigate when a friend told him
the Louvre was robbed in Paris.
“I’ve learned that there is
definitely fact-checking (in journalism),” MacFarlane, also 16, told The
Associated Press. “You guys are professionals and you have to tell the
truth or you’d be fired. I thought you guys just did whatever you wanted
and chose what to say about a topic.”
Still, news literacy
programs in schools are relatively rare. Schools already have a lot of
subjects to cover to prepare students for the future. And, remember,
journalists don’t have the best reputations. It can be hard for
educators to stick their necks out for them.
“There’s an inertia here,” Schneider said, “and this is an urgent issue.”
At
the University of Maryland, Murphy said she didn’t think there was an
inherent hatred toward journalists among her fellow students. “They
don’t have any experience reading journalism,” she said.
That’s
where she sees the journalism industry needing to make more of an
effort. One of the things she finds most frustrating about her chosen
field is a resistance to change, particularly an unwillingness or
inability to make meaningful use of social media.
“There’s very
little movement in the direction of going to where people are, as
opposed to expecting them to come to where you are,” Murphy said. “The
only way to turn it around is going to be to switch to doing things that
captivate people today, as opposed to captivating people 20 years ago.”
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David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social
(From the Montgomery Advertiser)
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